'works of imagination are really becoming too reasonable to be very entertaining. Formerly, in [italics] my time [end italics], a heroine was merely a piece of beautiful matter, with long fair hair and soft blue eyes, who was buffeted up and down the world like a shuttlecock, and visited with all sorts of possible and impossible miseries. Now they are black-haired, sensible women, who do plain work, pay morning visits, and make presents of legs of pork; - vide "Emma", which, notwithstanding, I do think a very capital performance: there is no story whatever, nor the slightest pretensions to a moral, but the characters are all so true to life, and the style is so dry and piquant, that it does not require the adventitious aides of mystery and adventure. "Rhoda" is of a higher standard of morals and very good and interesting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Susan Ferrier Print: Book
